There is tons of books, movies, mangas and games about that period. They all are extremly popular and they all do one thing - make it appear as period of glory and romance.

Perhaps that is because they are all trying to appeal to the public as a form of entertainment rather than trying to be historically accurate?

I'm actually not exactly sure what you were trying to say , because you seemed to criticize a book called "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" for over-romantizing the era, and dislike mass media productions for over-glorifying.

But that is what the industry is about.

The book is a 'Romance', stated explicitly in the title, you would expect it to be rather romantized compared to actual history. This book was also largely inspired by passed-down folklores and Huaben (made by storytellers on the streets entertaining others). It is really of no surprise that it is not the best at accuracy, or rather over-romantized ----- Nobody would be entertained and remember these stories if they are all about horrendous deaths and tragedies of war.

Mass media productions are no different. They are businesses after all, they need to profit off the sales of their products (which are largely based more on the novel anyway rather than actual history). People are playing the games, reading the mangas , watching the movies etc for entertainment, for enjoyment. In most cases, accuracy is a plus, but not a necessity. Many people learn about the era from there, but it should be pretty clear that they are not meant to be historically accurate sources.

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So why does everybody forget about this part and think about that time period as one of more popular in chinese history

As u/randomguy0101001 had detailed in his reply, the history is not totally lost even in media productions like the novel.

And you can find plenty of historically accurate sources for the time period if you really want to learn more about the era. From things like historical sources written right after the era (Sanguo Zhi) to more contemporary academic works like Rafe's.

If you are talking about the general public and pop history as the 'everybody', then again, I do not think that is very surprising --- It's nothing new that they can have a very skewed and inaccurate image of a particular history figure/era.

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Since the topic is about 3k, I will tag u/Dongzhou3kingdoms -- he's the man you would look to for a more detailed analysis of both the media portrayals and history of 3k.

The darkness and horrors of the three kingdoms

I don't know where you got the idea the population was reduced by a 10th or worse of its former self. The closest we come to having a population count would say reduced to a fifth by the end of the civil war and even taking that as fact requires some improper use of the data.

The best numbers we get before the civil war was the census of 140 AD by the Latter Han recorded in the Hou Han Shu that puts the population of just under 50 million. The best numbers we get from after the civil war is from the Jin taxation list compiled soon after they unified the land and recorded in the Jinshu, the numbers being 16 million.

A tremendous population drop but there are a few problems with taking this at face value. 140 is over four decades away from the civil war and from 168 onwards, the land was plagued by wave after wave of epidemics starting from the Antionne Plague. Another, if you notice the wording, is Jin didn't provide a full census but a taxation list, this was not a headcount but as Rafe De Crespigny puts it in The Three Kingdoms and Western Jin: A History of China in the Third Century A.D. "They may indeed be best understood as a series of quotas, indicating the assessed value and obligation of each unit, with no more than incidental relationship to the true population in each area."

One must also take into account the weak central control brought about by the civil war and by the manner of Jin's rise, this list is whom Jin could tax and so didn't include those whom Jin could not reach for taxes due to the families themselves keeping a distance or powerful landowners shielding them to maintain their own control (and limit their tax bill). There was, via the epidemics and then the civil war with the resulting killings and famine (plus continuation of epidemics), a heavy toll on the population but the numbers reflect a loss of central authority as well rather than a genuine death toll.

So in short, how many people died during the civil war? I have no idea since there is no way of telling but it is certainly not to the extent advertised.

You talk of genocide. Not unknown, Duan Jiong's campaigns against the Qiang in the late 160s have been called that, but it isn't a term used about the three kingdoms, even involving some of the most brutal accusations (Cao Cao in Xu, Sima Yi after conquering the Gongsun clan) I haven't seen professional historians use the term. Nor does anything compare to the Holocaust that I can think of.

I think it is important to highlight, in any romanticised era, the darker truth but I don't think exaggerations like total genocide or worse than anything in WW2 helps do that. Such terms should be used with care to not cheapen the word or the suffering of those who went through it. I don't know enough about the entire history of China and its many civil wars to know if this was one of the darkest periods in their history.

You are right that it does get romanticized, the suffering and brutality played down. The famines, the xenophobia, the sexism, the marriage via conquest, forced suicides, massacres, cannibalism, bigotry, the burning of the capital, abuses of power, wrongful executions, brutality, backstabbing, murder, the costs and the cruelty of war, the local peoples conquered or driven out by the Han Chinese. Or that the unity afterwards would be so brief.

It is not the only period of history this has happened to, world war two has had much glorification of "the greatest generation", nostalgia, movie companies pumping out films, lionizations of figures in national memories. Total War games have covered Shogun Japan, "the glory of Rome", Medieval period, Napoleonic era, Troy, about the only one that the franchise has covered that I'm not aware of popular culture cleaning up is Britannia in the Viking/Saxon era but more because I'm not aware of popular culture's coverage of the era.

Three Kingdoms is no different from other eras of history that have caught the popular imagination. The dark side gets downplayed or forgotten, people celebrate the considerable achievements, love the war, celebrate the "heroes". War is bad but people love to read about it, to play games about it, and lionize the great generals and minds of the time.

As /u/10thousand_stars points out, entertainment aims to be entertainment, it is not attempting to be a visual re-enactment of the records of the three kingdoms by Chen Shou. It has an audience in mind (and an age rating to aim for depending on the medium) and wishes to sell well. Doing enough to show Dong Zhuo as the big bad, showing tragic death, mentioning "oh there was famine" and maybe touch upon "war is bad" once or twice. They are not going to go after winning a game battle and make you sit through the full implications of what you have done, traumatising the gamers. People may not be so keen to finish the play or the manga if it stops for a while to fully settle onto implications of famine roams the land.

To end this segment on a positive note about the era before discussing the romance: Like all eras, it had some great people in terms of moral character and great people in terms of talent who were celebrated in their time and afterwards. While, thanks to the romance, people focus on the war, there were advancements in technology, history, religion, philosophy, medicine, literature (not just Cao Zhi's and Cai Yan's iconic poems). There was humour, friendship, kindness, romance within the chaos, humans grasping to understand their changing world. The south was transformed from a land of exile that was growing into something more but which, under Wu, turned into a potential empire with the Suns building on the population shifts during the Latter Han and creating something with it.

So yes it was dreadful, lots of people died and suffered through the collapse of a dying regime and failure to unify quickly but there were still good things going on. It was a time that still had light in it.

Well, because they haven't. I mean, you just consume a mass marketing thing that carries the name for mass consumption, but that doesn't mean that is all there is to it.

We can see from several poems written these days

Cao Cao's 蒿里行, which is composed sometimes after 197 and before his death [but probably a lot earlier] as events mentioned it occurs in 197, says and I roughly translate them as

关东有义士，兴兵讨群凶

In Guangdong [east of the Hangu Pass(Guan)] the righteous joined force, raised the host to punish the gathering evil doers

初期会盟津，乃心在咸阳

[They] sworn at Mengjin [location], [their] heart at Xianyang [or Changan, the capital where Dong relocate to with the emperor]

军合力不齐，踌躇而雁行

The host may be together but are divided, like the swan goose they hesitate to lead

势利使人争，嗣还自相戕

Ambition and Greed led them to conflict, and then they murdered each other

淮南弟称号，刻玺于北方

The younger brother at Huainan [Yuan Shu in 197] proclaim his order [as emperor], [Yuan Shao] carved the seal in the north [almost certainly about events in 191]

铠甲生虮虱，万姓以死亡

[Soldiers]Wearing armors so long that fleas grow on them, the population can only die

白骨露于野，千里无鸡鸣

White bones exposed in the field, no rooster calls in a thousand league

生民百遗一，念之断人肠

Was there but one survivor out of a hundred, if you think too long your intestines will break.

In RoTK novel, it has multiple entries like

in Ch 6,

却说众诸侯分屯洛阳。孙坚救灭宫中余火，屯兵城内，设帐于建章殿基上。坚令军士扫除宫殿瓦砾。凡董卓所掘陵寝，尽皆掩闭。...坚叹曰：“帝星不明，贼臣乱国，万民涂炭，京城一空！”言讫，不觉泪下。

Then the various lords began to camp in Luoyang. Sun Jian ordered the fire to be put out and stationed his troops in the city, and he had his tents pitched on the foundation of Jianzhang Palace. Jian ordered the troops to clear the remnant of the palace. What tombs Dong ordered pillaged, he closed them... Jian sighed, 'the star for the Emperor is dim, the bandits has ruin the state, all the people without a home, the capital is emptied' After that, he couldn't control his tears.

in Ch 93 Kongming said,

"昔日桓、灵之世，汉统陵替，宦官酿祸；国乱岁凶，四方扰攘。黄巾之后，董卓、傕、汜等接踵而起，迁劫汉帝，残暴生灵。因庙堂之上，朽木为官，殿陛之间，禽兽食禄；狼心狗行之辈，滚滚当道，奴颜婢膝之徒，纷纷秉政。以致社稷丘墟，苍生涂炭"

In the day of Huan & Ling, the rituals of Han was at their nadir, the Eunuchs were disasters, the state was in chaos and filled with disasters, the four corners were disturbed. After the Yellow Turban, Dong Zhuo, Li Jue, Guo Si, one followed another and taken the Han Emperor captive, their tyranny brought ruins to all. That is because in the court, the rotten wood were officials, in the halls of decisions, beasts wore cloth and were paid by the state. The likes with the heart of wolves and act of dogs, they were ones directing the path, the likes who wore the smiles of servants and have no pride in their knees, they were master of the policy. And so the state was in ruins, and the world shattered.

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Now Cao Cao probably wrote his poem after Guandu, he was thorough with Yuan Shao prior so it would make no sense for him to be talking about Yuan Shao's action in the same way as he did on Yuan Shu's move which declares himself emperor. But regardless, he would have written it after 197 when Yuan Shu declares himself Emperor, meaning he was writing about the suffering of the people after his own invasion of Xu Zhou in 193, where he was said to have massacred multiple cities according to the Book of Latter Han although it was not mentioned in the Record of the Three Kingdom. But in any case, we can say that Cao Cao is quite self-aware of the situation on the ground when he wrote that poem. And this poem did not go around unnoticed, where we have commentaries on this throughout various dynasties.

This poem and 薤露行 were considered to be poems of mourning by later writers, where the second poem mentioned '播越西迁移，号泣而且行, 瞻彼洛城郭，微子为哀伤', meaning 'in poverty and war they moved west, wailing as they move. Turn around and look at the shape of Luoyang, [I am filled with] Weizi's [of Song] sorrow.

Southern Liang's [5th century] literature commentary "The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons" said of the works of Cao Cao, 'speaks of either feast or talks about the long campaigns, the stories are of prolonging chaos, its poems one of sorrowful remembrance.' The people who were writing histories did not forget the time Three Kingdoms were in, the Book of Latter Han was written roughly the same time as the Literary Mind in the 5th century. They did not forget that era was one of prolonged chaos and suffering, they acknowledge it in the Book of Latter Han, where very likely they projected massacres onto Cao Cao's action, and their commentaries on the poetry of the time discussed people's writing as tragedies.

And this trend continued, in the 17th century Chen Zuoming wrote in a similar vein that Cao Cao has written many pieces, while they were imitating of the old odes, these came from his heart, he wrote about the concern of poverty, about the sorrow for the chaos, he talks about choices he has to make, and his desire to break free from this trend but failing. And that is probably the most important part, the literati of the time saw the amount of chaos and deaths and destruction in the time, and they talk about it and wrote about it, and everything seems so out of their control. The fatalistic writings of the time really show, almost as if it is someone looking for the morning star hoping for even a glimmer of light, but fear that even that tiny hope and desire would fail and disappoint them, again.

The writings of novels and poems of the time show how people were feeling, both helplessness as well as a desire to do something, anything, and end up failing. Cao Cao's poem began with a rousing start, the righteous gathered a mighty host to challenge evil, and ends with abject defeat, of the survivor, were they even 1% of the population.